Test your Design IQ
MANILA, Philippines - Who is this 20th century American architect and furniture woman designer whose works inspired both modernism and Art Deco?
She was born in Ireland in 1878, grew up in London and was one of the first women admitted to the Slade School of Art in 1898. She moved to Paris in 1902 and quickly established herself as one of the leading designers of lacquered screens and decorative panels.
In the Aug. 1917 issue of British Vogue magazine described her work as “influenced by the modernists, so they say. But it is not rather that she stands alone, unique, the champion of a singularly free method of expression.”
Her design style was as distinctive as her way of working, and she developed an opulent, luxuriant take on the geometric forms and industrially produced materials used by the international style designers such as Le Corbusier, Charlotte Perriand, and Mies van der Rohe, who shared many of her ideals.
Her voluptuous leather and tubular steel Bibedum chair and clinically chic E-1027 glass and tubular steel table are now familiar icons of the International Style as Le Corbusier and Perriand’s Grand Comfort Club chairs, yet for most of her career, she was relegated to obscurity as the same proud singularity that makes her work so prized today.
It was not until 1968 that she returned to public domain when the critic Joseph Rykwert published an appreciation of her work in Domus Magazine. Her work then featured in a few small exhibitions and was the unexpected hit of a 1972 auction of the contents of Jean Doucet’s apartment.
In her 80s, she regarded her “revival” with thinly disguised ambiguity. She was quick to complain when she spotted restoration pieces in exhibitions or if she felt that her work was poorly displayed.
But as she confided to her biographer Peter Adam,” One must feel grateful to all those people who bother to unearth us and at least preserve some of our work. Otherwise, it might have been destroyed like the rest.”
Last week’s question:
Who is the French born chef whose Bennelong restaurant at the Sydney Opera House is considered one of the best in the world?
Answer: Guillaume Brahimi
Winner: Arlene Go Remigio of Sta Cruz, Manila
Text your answer to 0915-1371538 with your name and address. One winner will be chosen through a raffle of texts with the correct answer. The winner will receive P2,000 worth of SM gift certificates for use at Our Home, SM Department Store, or SM Supermarket. They can claim their prize at Our Home in SM Megamall. Call the store manager at 634-1951, 634-1952.Bring photocopies of two valid IDs and a clipping of the Design Quiz issue in which you appear as winner.
